


I've Got You

by sallyamongpoison



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cuddling in Bed, M/M, Nightmares, Trespasser DLC Compliant, mention of vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sallyamongpoison/pseuds/sallyamongpoison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which they wake, now and then, together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Got You

“Rutherford.”

“ _Rutherford_.”

“ _Cullen!_ ”

He bolted upright then and inhaled like he’d been pulled from the water. Cullen coughed, lungs on fire, and he leaned over his cot to gag and cough up a bit of bile. Despite the fact that he’d been sleeping the room was too dark for him to see anything. His vision was blurred and he twisted in the darkness to steady himself. Where was he? What happened?

Warm hands pressed against his back and pulled him back up into bed. They were hot and sure and strong and tucked him back in with scratchy blankets and a pillow that was little better than a scrap of cloth. “Easy there,” a low, rumbling voice soothed, “you didn’t eat anything at supper so there’s nothing to sick up.”

“Where…where am I?” Cullen asked breathlessly. He struggled to sit up but the same warm hands kept him pressed against the cot.

“Kirkwall,” that same voice answered, and Cullen felt the cot dip and strain against more weight as someone settled in beside him, “you’re in your room. Safe. Or, well… as safe as it gets anyway.” The hands on his shoulders pressed lightly, an instruction to stay put, and moved away.

Cullen frowned as he struggled to remember. Kirkwall.  _Yes. Kirkwall. I’m in Kirkwall now._  It had been two months. Two months and he still woke in the night confused as to where he was. He’d been sick the majority of the time so far, not sleeping and plagued with nightmares the likes of which he’d never had before in his life, but still in Kirkwall. Not Ferelden. _Not Kinloch_. “Kirkwall,” he repeated, like he’d never heard it before, “I couldn’t…I couldn’t remember.”

Another warm hand, perhaps one of the same warm hands, moved to brush his hair away from his face. It was starting to grow out now and stuck to his forehead when he sweated. His body was both too hot and too cold, but that hand was nice. It was rough, but it was hot and gentle. Gentle… he appreciated gentle. “You were screaming again,” that voice commented, and Cullen closed his eyes as tried to remember.

Low. Rumbling. Comforting. Laughter he felt more than he heard. It wasn’t cruel or evil or painful. Just a laugh. Laughing with him as he tripped over pulling on his stockings under his Templar robes. Laughing when he threw a pillow. Laughing…

“Raleigh?” Cullen asked softly.

A chuckle, one that Cullen could feel through the cot and through the hand in his hair. “Yeah, it’s me,” came the affirmation and Cullen sighed in relief. He remembered now. His new roommate. His friend. They’d become friends quickly when Raleigh gently woke him from the nightmares. He’d complained at first, argued with Meredith about the sleeping arrangements, but not long ago Cullen had woken to the man wrapped tight around him to keep him from thrashing. He’d relaxed into strong arms and a wiry but still comfortable chest.

“Bad one?” Raleigh asked.

He nodded, though he knew the other man couldn’t see, “Surana. She…I…” and he let his voice trail off as a blush burned in the darkness. His hands clenched in a fist when he remembered what he’d seen. Her body had been soft but so, so cold. He’d wanted her so badly and she’d begged for him. Then thorns: thorns capturing him and holding him to the rotting corpse of one of his fallen fellows. Maker, he’d never felt so sick in his life.

That warm hand moved and Cullen felt the cot shift again, “Budge over, eh?” Raleigh asked, and Cullen moved a bit so the other Templar could stretch out alongside him. It was warmer that way, too, and Cullen found himself relaxing muscles that he hadn’t realized were tense. He took another deep breath, opened his lungs as best he could, and leaned back into the other man.

“Thanks.”

“I’ve got you, alright?”

–

A pain behind his knee. Blinding. Sharp. Then again in his thigh. Cullen groaned, lifted a hand to press the heel of it against his eyes, and sat up. For a moment his heart stuttered in fear that it was an attack. That was ridiculous, but it was always a concern of his. He’d grabbed the sword beside the bed on several occasions before he’d learned to wake first and listen. Nothing.

Nothing except how a foot had collided with his leg. Beside him Samson whimpered. He was white-knuckling the linens again, which would be the third set in a year that he’d ruined by ripping them. Cullen sighed, steeled himself, and leaned over his lover’s back to rub it gently. “Sam,” he prompted, “it’s a nightmare. It’s alright.”

Below him, the man whimpered again. Cullen could only imagine what he saw. In the months it took for him to come down off the red lyrium Samson had almost lost his mind. First he’d been Dagna’s pet, something to study, but Cullen couldn’t watch as the man he knew…as the man who’d helped him wasted away. So he’d offered to take the position Lavellan had extended to him before. He’d done what he could, helped where he could, and in the end it seemed only some of the man’s mind had been burned away.

When they’d taken him from the Temple of Mythal he’d been delirious and filled with whatever it was Corypheus had pumped his head full of. To have a mind full of Darkspawn control was… it hadn’t been good. For a long time, even before they’d found him, Cullen had been sure that Raleigh, the man who’d gone from roommate to friend to lover to enemy, was gone. Until his judgement. That…that was the man Cullen had known, plus or minus a bit of extra righteous indignation. Still.

And now, years later, they shared a bed in a house they’d practically built on their own. There were good nights, nights when they were too tired from work or sex to dream, and there were bad ones. Corypheus haunted them both still, along with other things, but they helped where they could. Others had come. Ex-Templars looking for a place that would take them in. Samson, Raleigh only to Cullen when no one else was around, had been quick to take up the mantle to offer help to those the Order had…well, they both knew. There were those they’d both seen.

They were the two sides of the same coin now, working together to make a difference like they’d always wanted to do. So they worked, doing what they could, and it was a good life. It was a life they enjoyed now that they had time that wasn’t spent counting the moments until they could sneak away. They had all the time in the world now.

“Cullen?” that low, rumbling voice asked. Of course he’d felt his name more than heard it. It made him smile at the memory of them clinging to each other on the lumpy cot back in the Gallows. Thinking about as much made him shuffle closer, despite the space of the bed, and Cullen wound his arms around Samson’s torso.

He leaned in and buried his face in against Samson’s neck, “Right here,” he murmured and felt the tension slip out of the body pressed against his own.

“Bad one.”

Cullen nodded then and ran his hand along the other Templar’s back, “I’ve got you.” 


End file.
